Last weekend I took my partner Will and his girls to see the new Top Gun movie in 4DX, on the recommendation of a friend. It was so cool!

So what is 4DX?

4DX is a state-of-the-art film technology delivering an immersive multi-sensory cinematic experience incorporating on-screen visuals and environmental effects such as motion, water, wind, fog, scent, snow and more to enhance the action on the screen.

How did it feel?

It was thrilling, scary and hugely enjoyable all at the same time!

When Maverick took off in his fancy jet, I also 'took off' in my chair with him, at least that's how it felt, as our chairs, in blocks of four, were programmed to move around to complement particular scenes in the film.

I felt the wind blowing through my hair and water splashing on my face during a romantic scene where Tom Cruise and his leading lady sailed away into the sunset.

And the theatre lit up with lightning and cracking noises during bombing scenes. It felt so real. I had to be reminded on several occasions that I didn't need to hang on to the arms of my chair for my life, as I would typically do on a flight!

In short, I was totally immersed and engaged with every twist and turn of the film and our experience! And I emerged with a big smile on my face.

So how does this relate to the mealtime experience for people living with dementia?

It reminded me how important having a sensory experience can be to enhancing engagement and enjoyment of an occasion and got me thinking about ways you can enhance your mealtime experience using sight, sounds, smells, touch and taste.

Here are some ideas to improve your care home dining experience by engaging your residents' senses.

1) The sense of smell or olfactory experience has many functions, including detecting desirable foods, playing a part in taste, and can arouse emotions and memories without awareness.

When it comes to smells, we can be influenced and not even realise it.

For people living with dementia, familiar smells of cooking can help to stimulate their senses to increase their appetites and give them cues that it's time for a meal.

So how can you incorporate more flavoursome aromas as part of your mealtime experience?

I have seen care homes baking bread, cakes and cooking onions and spices prior to mealtimes and bringing them into their dining spaces to help create delicious aromas to promote appetite.

For more tips on how to improve your dining experience, why not download our FREE Dignified Dining Solutions Guide here.

2) The Visual Experience

Because the environment can cause anxiety and confusion for people living with dementia, disorientation and bewilderment are common experiences.

Providing visual cues can help people to recognise dining areas

• Dining rooms should be welcoming and homelike, and everything about them should prompt recognition that it is time for a meal.

• Incorporating the use of highly visible contrasting colour pictorial signage helps establish a clear route to the dining room. Images can help improve the environment and support good care.

• Research has shown that the use of food-themed reminiscence images, including traditional household-named brands such as Birds and Oxo, can provide powerful memory triggers to help stimulate appetite and renew interest in food to promote improved nutrition.

• Laying tables with linen-style tablecloths and napkins can make every dining room look welcoming and homelike and dress your dining tables beautifully. This will help to prompt your ladies and gents with dementia that it is time for a meal and can lead to them eating better.

Visual Ways To Promote Appetite

We all like to see what we're going to eat, so one of the most effective ways to communicate different meal options available is to provide show plates of the different meal options to allow the people you support to make their choices.

Alternatively, pictorial menu boards can be used to display meal options, and those which include a clock displaying the time and timings of serving meals can help to prompt people it's time to eat.

A wipe-clean care menu book can work well where verbal communication is a challenge. This contains many popular everyday meal, drink and snack options giving people control over their menu selections as they can point at dishes they would like to choose.

Meal Presentation

We all eat with our eyes first, so it's really important to ensure that food always looks appetising and is attractively presented, using colour and contrast on plates for everyone regardless of their condition, so that nobody is isolated or treated differently.

For people on a pureed diet, particularly, presentation is as fundamental as the dish itself. It is common for people with dementia to refuse to eat what they can't recognise.

The use of food moulds is becoming increasingly popular to recreate the original shapes of pureed foods as family members and care caterers understand the key benefits:

1. Improved meal presentation and nutrition
2. Increased dignity at mealtimes
3. Greater meal variety
4. Reduced preparation time and wastage

The use of colour

As dementia progresses, people's colour definition decreases.

White crockery doesn't usually provide sufficient tonal contrast to enable people to see staple foods on their plates. Some foods which are white are the most calorific part of a main meal, for example:

1. Carbohydrates - potatoes, pasta, rice
2. Protein - fish, chicken, pork

Brightly coloured crockery and drinkware make food and drink much more visible and appetising, which enables improved nutrition and enjoyment of the social benefits of mealtimes.

Whilst there are no guarantees that one colour will always work for every individual, a tonal contrast of 20 - 30% is sufficient for most people.

Airedale NHS Foundation Trust has been working to improve the acute care environment for people with dementia in the hospital.

'We have introduced the coloured crockery range and had some excellent feedback on how this has made a difference.'

3. The Taste Experience

I was recently auditing a care home's mealtime experience and was given a warning before I arrived:

'You may want to bring your own lunch in Jo. You won't want to eat the food! '

This was not a good omen for me.

If your chefs and cooks aren't tasting the food, they're preparing for your ladies and gents, and you and your staff aren't eating it either, how do you know that it's good enough for your people?

The food you're serving needs to be tasty enough for you to eat to be good enough for your residents!

Changes in tastes

Often people living with dementia don't taste food and experience flavour like they once did, which can change appetite preferences.

Taste buds are connected to the nerves in the brain; when these are affected, it can cause a bad taste in the mouth. And because taste buds are diminished with age, people can opt for heavier foods or crave food with lots of flavour and calories, like sugary sweets.

Try the following tips:

1. Serve sweet sauces and chutneys with meals
2. Add small amounts of sugar or honey to savoury foods
3. Accept that some people may prefer their pudding first, and that's okay!
4. Try adding stronger flavours, i.e. to foods to help tickle the taste buds!

4. The Auditory Experience

Sounds can play both a positive and negative part of the mealtime experience.

Negative noise

A noisy environment can be distracting - the dining room should be free from loud music, television, vacuum cleaners and staff shouting to each other across the room.

Regularly auditing noise levels at mealtimes can help to highlight unnecessary noise levels and change practices; here's what happened when one of our customers completed an audit:

'We've been auditing noise levels at mealtimes and have noticed that by making simple changes to the way we manage the mealtime experience, our residents are much less distracted, and are clearing their plates rather than picking at their meals, so we are delighted to be seeing improved levels of nutrition and less wastage.'

When was the last time you audited your noise levels during meals?

Positive sounds

Familiar sounds of cooking can help to stimulate the senses, such as the tinkling of cutlery and rattling of pots and pans.

Calming, soft music that's familiar to your ladies and gents can be soothing and help improve their engagement and enjoyment of meals.

Care staff being briefed about the day's menu means they can talk about meal options with residents to help encourage their interest in meals and improve appetite levels.

5. The Tactile-Touch Experience

Ways to introduce touch to your ladies and gents' dining experience include:

• Getting them involved with laying tables with cutlery and condiments, folding napkins or anything to do with mealtimes where it gives them the opportunity to touch and feel.

• My Mum used to love getting a tea towel and helping to dry up after meals; it gave her a purpose.

• Encouraging their independence with eating and drinking as much as possible by introducing adapted cutlery and crockery that will help them engage better with the experience.

• And for people who can't manage knives and forks or struggle to sit through mealtimes, cutlery-free dining options, or finger foods, can really help to promote improved nutrition as people feel empowered again to eat independently, albeit a bit differently.

• Brightly coloured small snack bowls provide an ideal vehicle for cutlery-free foods for residents on the go.

Think: 'Everything you do for me you take away from me'.

What happens when sensory functions change?

Vision, hearing, smell, taste, and peripheral sensation allow us to safely experience and enjoy the world around us.

However, as people age, they often experience changes in their sensory function. These changes can impact a person's nutritional intake in the following ways;

• Loss of ability to recognise the temperature of food

• Recognition of thirst could be poor, increasing the risk of dehydration

• Visual impairments make orientation a challenge

• Changes to smell and taste may bring them to now enjoy foods previously disliked and dislike food previously liked

• Often a preference for sweet foods can develop

Our top tips to help with sensory function changes

• Use brightly coloured cups and place them directly in the line of vision so that they're easily seen and reached.

• Make sure that cups are lightweight with a wide handle for easy grip

• Check the food temperature before serving to make sure it's not too hot

• Carbonated drinks can help to trigger the swallowing reflex

• Some people may prefer to have their pudding before their main course, and that's okay!

In conclusion, the more you're able to engage the people you support through their senses, the better their enjoyment of mealtimes will be.

If you'd like to learn more ways to enhance your dining experience, then why not download our Dignified Dining Guide here.